


Summer and Winter

by ai_firestarter



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-18
Updated: 2014-10-18
Packaged: 2018-02-21 15:24:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2473106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ai_firestarter/pseuds/ai_firestarter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I wouldn't trust your girlfriend too much, cutie." [Set after 1x16]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Summer and Winter

**Author's Note:**

> Set just after episode 1x16.

_"I wouldn't trust your girlfriend too much, cutie."_

Carmilla tosses this one off as she rummages through the mini-fridge, presumably digging out the chocolates she swiped from Laura the night before.

Laura's been buying them and leaving them hidden around the apartment. She tells herself it's to keep Carmilla happy and docile, but it's also because Carmilla on chocolate doesn't look like she's suffering from perma-hangover, and Laura likes that she can do that to her otherwise legitimately-terrifying roommate.

It's hours after the 'gang' met and discussed the recent revelations regarding Carmilla and her 'seduction eyes', and plotted their next move. She can almost still feel the energy radiating from Danny. Now, though, Carmilla doesn't seem so dangerous. She never does, when it's just the two of them.

Laura shifts, setting down her tattered library copy of THE BLACK ANGELS IN THEIR EYELESS GRACE, a book of poems in which Perry earmarked a poem with imagery eerily similar to The Dreams. The poems are dark and full of horrors that sound all too familiar on Silas U's campus - particularly creepy considering the library shelves it in 'nonfiction'.

Laura fixes her eyes on her roommate, who gives her a devilish look in the moonlight streaming in from the window. Her skin pale as milk, lips (tonight) red like cherries. Laura can definitely see the whole 'vampire' thing now.

"Why do you say that? Jealous?" Laura undercuts the snark with the sideways smile that's been her main guise of kindness in their conversations.

(Sometimes it means she confuses herself into thinking she and Carmilla are having a good time. Bonding. Like friends.)

Carmilla sits on her own bed, soy milk in one hand and raspberry chocolates in the other, and fixes Laura with a catlike stare. "That's adorable. She's not my type."

"What exactly is your type?" Laura asks. Besides future kidnapping victims, she adds in her head.

"Girls with a naive spark. Ones with original ideas, and are far too earnest for their own good. That the world hasn't crushed out of them yet." Carmilla lays back and looks to the ceiling, as if to belie the point that her 'type' sounds a lot like Laura.

"Pretty specific." Should Laura be taking notes for a victim profile? And then Carmilla shifts to look at her. The gaze lingers a little too long. Laura realises she's not describing a type. She IS describing Laura.

And there's a vulnerability that flickers behind her eyes, before Carmilla shifts away again. "I meant what I said, by the way. The redhead's gonna do nothing but stab you right through the heart."

Interesting phrasing. Laura shifts to the edge of the bed. book in hand. "Why do you say that?"

"I was invited to join the Summer Society, once upon a time. A long time ago. I met a girl there..." Carmilla trails off. Laura wants to ask when, but she knows Carmilla will lie. Knows she's recounting a story from another of her many lives on the Silas campus. "She was beautiful, and smart. Angry and hard as obsidian. Like your girl. She wasn't my usual type, not at all. She was safe. We could... we could be together without my personal obligations interfering."

Laura leans in, fascinated.

"It was a whirlwind romance. I'd planned to leave Silas that Spring, my responsibilities completed, but I stayed. I'd hoped that we could--" her voice breaks off. "I'm sorry. Memory lane is so fraught with the debris of my long-ago naivete. Why was I picking that old wound again?"

"Danny. Summer Society."

"Right."

Carmilla falls silent. Overwhelmed by feeling, or figuring out her next move? Emotional or coldly logical, manipulative? Talking with Carmilla, Laura can never quite get her sea legs under her, can never tell what the ratio is of truth to lies.

"Your belle of the hunt is a third-year. Third year is a good time, before your path is set into concrete and your loyalties here are bound with the force of powers you would not understand. But when your beloved enters her final year at Silas, she will learn the truth of the Summer Society. Of its history. Its... persecutions, of students they disapprove of."

Laura frowns. "Like... white supremacy?"

"After a sense. And she will never tell you the truth, because they are bound to secrecy. Nobody knows the secrets of the Summer Society except the Summer Society."

"... And you."

"As I said. I was once invited into the Summer Society. A lifetime ago." Carmilla shrugs, but Laura now knows she means literally. Which of her old selves was a Summer Society member? Mircalla Karnstein? Marcilla Karnstein? Callimar Karnstein? Laura at once wants to ask Danny for access to the Summer Society records to find out... and, at the same time, knows she'll never mention this anecdote to her.

Somehow, from the silences punctuating Carmilla's story, she knows that maybe the Summer Society shouldn't learn about Carmilla's past. That their methods of dealing with a vampire would be harsher than Laura's own, which mostly involve tailing and vague considerations of kidnapping and/or detainment.

Laura looks at Carmilla. A genuine smile slips out. "Thanks."

Carmilla jerks her gaze towards her in surprise, so Laura clarifies, "Thank you for looking out for me. In your own way."

"I just-- This world will destroy you if you let it. There are secrets swirling underneath your feet and you see none of them. I don't want that to happen." Carmilla smiles that eerie, distant smile that implies much more than has been said, and tosses Laura one of her own chocolates.

"I'm full. Maybe that will help you sleep." And just as suddenly as she was present, Carmilla is gone, slumped over in bed facing the wall.

Laura curls up on her bed, opening her book and popping the chocolate into her mouth.

"--And that book sucks."

At that, Laura can only chuckle. Maybe Carmilla isn't so bad.

Maybe.


End file.
